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Captchas
03
What are the disadvantages of captchas?
The use of captchas to protect web services is not without controversy. For example, the integrated picture puzzles massively restrict the accessibility of the underlying web application. Particularly for visually impaired people, such captcha tasks cause great difficulties when logging in. Acoustic captchas promise a remedy, but they are criticized for their high degree of difficulty and cause particularly great problems for the hearing-impaired.
In terms of user-friendliness, captchas are also considered problematic because they represent an additional step to logging in to web stores and other portals. The additional effort for potential customers has a negative effect on the conversion rate. The negative effect is reinforced by increasingly demanding captcha tasks. However, these are necessary to compensate for advances in artificial intelligence that enable automated systems to solve simple captchas without much effort. A team of researchers at Stanford University questioned the future viability of common captcha methods back in 2010. Already at that time, many human users had problems answering the small riddles.
04
How cybercriminals circumvent captchas
In practice, captcha queries are primarily used to thwart misuse and attacks by means of credential stuffing or credential cracking. In most cases, cybercriminals target lucrative accounts for online banking or payment in their attacks. The captchas serve as an additional security layer here - however, the queries are less suitable as a sole protective wall. For cybercriminals and their bot armies, captchas are not an insurmountable hurdle, because there are various methods to circumvent the protective function:
MODERN ALGORITHMS
Modern algorithms are capable of reliably solving even complex captchas and usually perform better than human users. In the technological race, therefore, constantly improved captcha methods are required to ensure reliable protection.
TROJANER
Trojans can trick thousands of users into filling out captcha queries manually - disguised as mini-games on websites or local systems, for example.
CAPTCHA SOLVING SERVICES
Captcha solving services offer the resolution of captcha queries as a service at ridiculous prices and even provide interfaces for further processing of the data. With these services, the answering of the captchas is done by armies of cheap laborers who solve the digital puzzles manually in developing countries. Via API integration, captcha solving services can even be directly connected to the cybercriminals' automated attack tools.
06
Captchas: What you need to know
Captchas are small pictures and word puzzles designed to prevent automated access to websites by bots. These Turing tests are designed so that only human users can successfully pass them. However, cybercriminals have various methods at their disposal to get their malicious bots past captcha blockers. Special algorithms, Trojans or captcha solving services are used for this purpose. Captchas are therefore unsuitable for holistic control of automated access. This requires more comprehensive tools such as Bot Management Services, which allow granular control of bots on the company's own websites.
With Myra Web Application Security, you can precisely manage all requests on your website thanks to Deep Bot Management. Using fingerprinting technology, Myra reliably identifies and manages incoming bot requests, while malicious traffic is automatically blocked or redirected. The solution prevents false positives through downstream captcha prompts. In this way, optimal performance is always available for both traditional user requests and machine-generated bot requests, without compromising the security of online accounts.
Learn more about Myra Deep Bot Management